Makey Kit

By: Christopher Robison

In this weeks class, we dedicated the whole time to a makerspace session. A makerspace is a collaborative work space for making, learning, exploring and sharing that uses high tech to no tech tools. In our classes case, we used a bit of technology called the Makey Makey invention kit that turns everyday objects into touchpads and combine them with the internet to play games, instruments, or simply control the mouse and keys. Our class was given the challenge to figure out how to play the classic game of Frogger using only the kit, alligator clips, and some everyday objects.

My group was the first to succeed in solving the Makey challenge after a quite lengthy trial and error period. Eventually, many class members made breakthroughs, which lead to me figuring out how to complete the circuit without touching the board. What didn’t work was trying to use lead wires and using celery as celery isn't a good conductor. We also couldn’t figure out how to ground the circuit without physically touching the circuit board until I realized that I just needed another cable running out to myself. Once this step was finished, the circuit was complete and the game started to work properly. We next had to make a working guitar using only a cardboard cutout, playdough, and the kit. This was quite easy as I already knew how to use the circuit board. All that needed to be done was some artistic work with play dough and the cardboard and voila a guitar hero style game was ready to play.

This week we also had to create a little commercial relating to our respective majors and why you should choose them. Below is my two minute commercial that I made on a website called Animoto that uses videos and images to create a beautiful animated slideshow. My commercial is on computer science and why I believe it is a good field to study. I bring up topics such as programming languages, jobs in all industries and the hefty salary that follows.